newkerala.com - brings you latest news, info & entertainment

Six killed in Iraq attacks

Baghdad, April 7 IANS | 12 months ago

Six people were killed and 28 wounded in separate attacks across Iraq Monday, police and medical sources said.

In Anbar province, a suicide car bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint manned by members of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group and blew it up in al-Soufiyah district in the eastern part of the provincial capital city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, Xinhua reported citing a provincial police source.

The blast killed two Sahwa members and wounded seven others, the source said.

Iraqi army helicopter gunships attacked al-Askari neighbourhood in the eastern part of the city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, and killed a militant, believed to be a leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL).

Separately, artillery and mortar shelling on several neighbourhoods in the besieged city of Fallujah left a civilian dead and nine others wounded, a medical source from the city's hospital said.

Meanwhile, several mortar rounds landed on the town of Garma near Fallujah, damaging several houses and wounding four civilians, including a child, a local police source said.

Anbar province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi in late December last year.

Meanwhile, near Baghdad, a soldier was killed and three others were wounded when gunmen attacked an army patrol in Abu Ghraib area, some 25 km west of Baghdad, a local police source said.

In northern Iraq, soldiers in eastern Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, shot dead a gunman and blew up his car while he was approaching their checkpoint, a local police source said.

Also in Mosul, five people were wounded when a roadside bomb explosion missed an army patrol in the southern city and hit civilian cars instead, the source added.

Iraq is witnessing its worst violence in recent years. According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, a total of 8,868 Iraqis, including 7,818 civilians and civilian police personnel, were killed in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.